The Set: Hoffenheim 1–4 Bayer Leverkusen

Bayer Lev­erkusen returned to form and dis­man­tled league lead­ers Hof­fen­heim in front of 30,000 at the Rhein-Neckar Arena. Scor­ing two min­utes into the match set them up for an inspired first half and scor­ing again one minute into the sec­ond half sealed the three points for die Werkself.

Hof­fen­heim strug­gled to find defen­sive cohe­sion, espe­cially on set pieces and set out the stall with a poor tac­ti­cal setup, which allowed Bayer to dom­i­nate them much as they did in week three when Bruno Labbadia’s side won 5–2 at the Bay Arena.

Hof­fen­heim look set to con­cede the top spot in the league unless no vic­tory is found in the weekend’s pre­mier match between Bay­ern Munich and Hertha Berlin. But more impor­tant than their cur­rent posi­tion, Ralf Rang­nick must con­cen­trate on find­ing orga­ni­za­tion in the back, a for­ma­tion that will fit his post-Ibesevic squad, and a return of a fast dwin­dling belief.

As for Bayer 04, another excel­lent Fri­day Night per­for­mance is just the bounce back they needed after six rounds of frus­tra­tion. They should be a major fac­tor, bar­ring injury, in the top three spots as the Bun­desliga gets into crunch time. A return to the Cham­pi­ons League could well be on the cards for the 2002 final­ists, but a draw between Hertha and Bay­ern could see them within strik­ing dis­tance of the ever-elusive cham­pi­onship that they have never won.

Seven Ran­dom Things You Didn’t Know About Hoffenheim-Bayer

1. There is noth­ing more appar­ently absent from the game as a well-crafted set piece when it hap­pens. Tonight, Bayer’s 3rd goal was a finely con­structed goal with Bar­netta using his fake run for deliv­ery to pro­pel him into empty space in the box off a free kick. As Iberts­berger delayed in mov­ing out of the wall to pick up the freed Swiss Inter­na­tional, Kladec used the dead ball to slot to the open man. Bar­netta then fired a vol­ley across the box to the ghost­ing Helmes and the final play of the first half was a goal for the visitors.

2. Rang­nick is still try­ing to fig­ure out the best for­ma­tion with­out Ibe­se­vic. Con­sid­er­ing that Ibe­se­vic was never sup­posed to be a started, you would think it would be eas­ier. For this game, Rang­nick started with a 4–4-2 with Demba Ba and Sanogo up top. How­ever this pair­ing didn’t work as Demba Ba pushed Sanogo out wide, which negated Sanogo’s main strength as being an aer­ial tar­get. Demba Ba has proven a great part­ner for the crafty Ibe­se­vic, so if using a 4–4-2, why didn’t he chose Welling­ton, who is com­ing into fit­ness and is the most sim­i­lar in style to their top scorer.

   Later when he changes to the more famil­iar 4–3-3, Sanogo still wasn’t given the cen­ter spot. But even more impor­tantly fac­ing a double-six for­ma­tion from Lab­ba­dia, he retained Gus­tavo, a six him­self who wasn’t needed after Augusto hob­bled off, and who isn’t going to help going for­ward. So a 4–3-3 became a 4–1-2–3. It was an odd for­ma­tion, and didn’t start pro­duc­ing any chances still until Welling­ton even­tu­ally replaced Sanogo. If going with a 4–3-3, he should have sac­ri­ficed his DM for a more box-to-box midfielder.

3. That being said, Gus­tavo is the hid­den gem of the Hof­fen­heim side. While Car­los Alberto and Sal­i­hovic are more trum­peted for their con­tri­bu­tions to Hoffenheim’s free flow­ing mid­field, it’s the Brazil­ian DM that is the cen­ter piece of their fan­tas­tic attack. Even though they lost, his con­tri­bu­tion to break­ing up Bayer’s attack and pro­vid­ing a start­ing point for Hoffenheim’s offense were excel­lent. In fact his excel­lent per­for­mance was quite easy to pick out when com­pared to the ane­mic per­for­mances by every­one else.

4. Is Ibe­se­vic the man they are miss­ing most or is it Vice-captain Mar­vin Comp­per? The left-back posi­tion was manned tonight by Per Nils­son, who had a bit of a shocker. Mean­while the Hoffe were torn apart on set pieces, when Comp­per would have been a steady­ing influ­ence. His nag­ging injury seems to be much more influ­en­tial on the upstarts than their forward.

5. Usu­ally when you get the Setanta UK feed, you get a cou­ple of ana­lysts that are decent, but not great. Tonight Rafael Honig­stein was the color man for the game and it was such a joy to hear some­one with such knowl­edge of the league, pro­vid­ing analy­sis on tac­tics, his­to­ries and play­ing styles unlike any I have heard before in the Eng­lish lan­guage. Here’s hop­ing that he’s a per­ma­nent fix­ture on the Fri­day night game for Setanta.

6. What has hap­pened to Rene Adler? Is the pres­sure of being Germany’s #1 too great to bear for a 24 year old or are we see­ing the ebbs and flows of youth? Yes, he made a huge mis­take in this game when he took down Demba Ba when it wasn’t needed. And it cost the Werk­self a goal; how­ever, this is more evi­dence of a sys­tem­atic break­down in his deci­sion mak­ing process. Last year he was so con­fi­dent and always made the right deci­sion. This year he seems prone to ter­ri­ble lapses in judg­ment when it comes to crosses or charg­ing. And it’s not just that. His reac­tion is off. Last year, he was the only goal keeper I would watch a game just to see. His reac­tion saves were bet­ter than most goals. Now he gets beaten by the most innocu­ous of balls at times. Take last week. Sure the Ham­mer struck the ball fero­ciously, but right at Adler and he still couldn’t move in time. Some­thing is wrong with my bro­mance and it’s worrying.

7. Atruro Vidal’s sus­pen­sion may have been a bless­ing in dis­guise for Lab­ba­dia. While his workrate and inge­nu­ity will be needed in the home stretch, his absence this week made room for a tac­ti­cal change for Bruno. By employ­ing a double-six for­ma­tion (aka the Dou­ble Pivot) using both cul­tured holder Simon Rofles and gritty vet­eran Tomasz Zdebel, there is now an option if any of the more attack­ing mid­field­ers like Augusto or Bar­netta get a nik. It was a nice sys­tem that deployed wide and caused Andreas Beck to look poor while shut­ting down Car­los Alberto. And all of this with­out los­ing the attack­ing flair and tech­ni­cal play that has made Bayer a name that can be men­tioned along­side Arse­nal and Barcalona.

   GD Star Rat­ing
   load­ing…
   The Set: Hof­fen­heim 1–4 Bayer Lev­erkusen, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

   Tagged as: Demba Ba, Luis Gustavo Dias, Marvin Compper, Rafael Honigstein, Ralf Rangnick, Rene Adler